Family will bury tragic bride-to-be in her dress
A MOTHER of three who drowned while attending a hen party is to be buried in the wedding dress she never got to wear, her family said yesterday.
The body of 30-year-old Ruth Maguire was found in Carlingford Lough on Monday, two days after she went missing during a friend’s hen night in the Co. Louth village.
Ms Maguire had posted a photo of herself close to the water shortly before she disappeared but gardaí and her friends and family are unclear as to how she ended up in the lough.
The 30-year-old, from Newcastle, Co. Down, was on a hen night with 32 others in the village when she went missing on Saturday night.
In an emotional interview in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, Ms Maguire’s sister Rachel Wilkinson revealed that Ruth was due to get married to her partner and children’s father James Griffin in August.
‘She was getting married on August 8. Everything was ready; she was very organised,’ Rachel said. ‘I was going to be maid of honour. All the children hers, mine... were going to be flower boys and girls. There were 180 guests.’ She added: ‘We are going to let her wear her wedding dress in the coffin.’
Her sister said the family are devastated at Ruth’s sudden death and described her sister as the sensible member of the family who didn’t drink much.
‘It’s so unexpected; you don’t expect to bury your younger sister,’ she added. ‘Nobody really knows what happened. Ruth had put out a short video with no sound on Instagram at 12.12am on Sunday and that was the last time she used her phone.
‘But on that image there was a picture of a doorway to a small cottage across the road from the entrance to the pier and that’s what triggered the whole search in the lough.’
Ms Wilkinson said Ruth’s fiancé started to worry when he was told that she hadn’t returned to her accommodation on Saturday night.
‘He knew there was something drastically wrong immediately,’ she told the Belfast Telegraph.
‘She hadn’t rang anybody... James brought the kids to my mum’s right away and then he went down and tried to find her.”
Ms Wikinson said she received an extremely worried phonecall from her mother around lunchtime on St Patrick’s Day to tell
‘Nobody knows what happened’
her the news. ‘Mum expected the worst; her gut instinct was that there was something very badly wrong because it was completely out of character,’ she added.
‘Mum said if Ruth had a breath in her she’d have rang home to ask how the kids were.’
On Sunday, the women who had attended the party took to social media to appeal for information on Ms Maguire’s whereabouts, sharing a photo of her, taken on Saturday night.
One friend took to social media to voice family and friends’ concerns over her whereabouts.
‘It’s now been a full 24hrs [since] Ruth Maguire has been seen,’ they wrote on Sunday. ‘She was separated from our hen party last night in Carlingford and we assumed that she would return by morning after a few of the girls searched for her.’
The post added that Ms Maguire’s phone had been inactive since midnight on Saturday.
However, on Monday, Greenore Coast Guard announced that they had found a body.
Spokesman George Campbell said: ‘I am sorry to say that a young female has been recovered and identified as the person reported missing.
‘Our sympathy goes out to the lady’s family.’
Tributes and condolences have poured in for the devoted mother on social media since then.